It may sound like a bunch of hot air, but 50 years ago balloons bombed Colorado.
The Colorado towns of Juanita, Collbran, Delta and Timnath were visited by balloon-borne incendiary and anti-personnel bombs, which caused neither injury nor destruction - unless you count a tractor swallowed by a crater on John Swets' Timnath farm.The Japanese decision to use hydrogen balloons to transport bombs 6,200 miles across the Pacific Ocean was retaliation for the United States' 1942 Tokyo air raids.
Between November 1944 and April 1945, Japan launched more than 9,000 balloons, theorizing the jetstream would carry them to America, where they would cause forest fires and mass panic.
Only 285 balloon-related incidents were reported, including one that killed six people in Oregon.
Encouraged by the government, the media didn't report the bombs, and panic was averted - even when six large balloons were seen traveling over Denver on March 26, 1945.
By then, three balloons had already exploded in the state; the first Dec. 16, 1944 in Juanita in southern Colorado, 4 miles from the New Mexico border. On March 11, 1945, a balloon exploded near a cemetery above Delta.
On March 19, an explosion yanked John Swets and his 8-year-old son Jack from the machinery shed on their Timnath farm, 7 miles south of Fort Collins. They saw a white fireball spitting sparks 10 to 15 feet into the air.
The resulting crater measured 10 inches in diameter and was 46 inches deep. Among the remnants was the tail assembly from a 26-pound incendiary bomb.
Another bomb exploded underground, but Swets didn't know that until a month later when his tractor fell into a cavern caused by the blast.
Colorado's last confirmed balloon bombing occurred June 12 east of Collbran in northeast Mesa County.
Currently, the Colorado History Museum has on display a scaled-down model of one of the gondolas that were affixed to the balloons.